I have this weird, hipster-like tendency to not read or watch anything that’s rampantly popular until the frenzy has died down. I couldn’t help myself with The Hunger Games though; all of that teen angst and glorious fighting was hard to resist.
Catching Fire is the second installment in The Hunger Games trilogy, a science fiction, post-apocalyptic series written by Suzanne Collins. Written as a sequel, it continues the tale of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) after their unorthodox victory in the 74th annual Hunger Games. Since the duo’s daring act of defiance, an uprising is in the works throughout the 12 districts.
For the 75th Hunger Games, or “Quarter Quell,” the Capitol introduces some kind of spicy twist to revamp the games. Considering the growing rebellion and Katniss’s role in it, the surprise element is revealed as 24 victors from previous years re-entering to compete. Will Katniss and Peeta be lucky enough to survive the games again? Dun dun duuuuunnn!
The movies to-date generally remain true to the books, which is amazing. I never understood why parts of famous novels were changed for film adaptation if they were easily transferable to screen and well-liked to begin with. Don’t even get me started on the City of Bones movie.
I found Catching Fire to focus too much time on recapping the events from book one, making the first portion of the film repetitive. It’s as if the producers wanted the second movie to be able to stand alone, which was completely unnecessary given that the entire world’s population has seen it and/or read the book.
Catching Fire features some stellar actors, including Woody Harrelson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lenny Kravitz, Elizabeth Banks and brother of Thor – Liam Hemsworth. Also JLaw is amazing.
gif credit: thoughtcatalog.com
Catching Fire was the highest-grossing film at the box office in 2013. That means it can’t be bad, right?
gif credit: Tumblr
The third book is following the annoying new Hollywood trend of being split into two installments, so the first half of Mockingjay will premiere on November 21, 2014. Yipee!
8/10 – makes me want to run around with a bow and arrow yelling “I volunteer! I volunteer as tribute!”
comedies and dramas and thrillers, oh my! 
As someone who hasn’t read any of the books at all I’m happy that the writers and producers made it so that the movie could stand on its own if the books had never existed. And I did like this sequel but I have to agree with you, there tended to be lots of repetition as well as an unusual amount of time trying to remind the audience of everything that had occurred previously. Will probably see Catching Fire but it feels almost dragging along, hopefully I get to see it before I lose too much interest in the series.
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Yeah it’s great the way they set it up for those who hadn’t read the book; it was almost all exactly the same, with a few minor details changed to better suit the screen and make it easier to understand without any background knowledge. I’m kind of annoyed that the last book is split into two films, but that seems to be the new trend. I think the new Mockingjay movie took way too long to come out after Catching Fire. I definitely lost interest along the way, and am not that excited to see it…
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I started to watch this movie and generally found the premise engaging. Sadly I fell asleep in the middle of it. Probably because of the lack of oxygen to my brain from holding my breathe, waiting for something big to happen that never really occurred.
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I think I was one of the older males in the crowd last night at Mockingjays Premier, and certainly the only one dressed as Katniss, super embarrassing. I won’t give any spoilers, and this is extremely cliche but I enjoyed the books much more. I like that the movies don’t go into some of the weird scifi stuff the books do like the beast at the end of hunger games with the dead tributes eyes or the lizard people thing, they keep it as realistic as possible. What I don’t like is the attempts to pull on teenage girls heartstrings, for obvious reasons, the main being in out of my teenage girl phase, the other is that time could be used to show more vengeance. Either way great movie with great new actors that will have you saying “where is he/she from? Oh right!!”
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HAHA I actually laughed out loud.
If you had let me know ahead of time, I would have totally come with you as Peeta, but I guess it’s too late now! Unfortunately, since the movie isn’t in IMAX or any theatre that let’s you pick your seats ahead of time instead of making you wait in line three hours before the show, I won’t be seeing it until the frenzy has died down a bit 😦
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